Darkest Moments
by PippinStrange
Summary: Merlin's point of view after throwing himself into the Dorocha to save Arthur's life. "They say the darkest hour is just before dawn," Arthur said. Merlin's darkest moments were after dawn... from the end of Darkest Hour, Part One, and the beginning of Part Two. Read and review.


_**Arthur and his manservant, Merlin, have been chased by the Dorocha (disembodied spirits whose touch brings instant death) and have taken refuge in a small room. One-shot spans the last moments between Arthur and Merlin, and the beginning of part two of The Darkest Hour.**_

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_**_**Note: Not slash, but any Merthur fan would enjoy this anyhow. I enjoy the closeness of the two characters, so I'd say it's heavy on the "bromantic friendship" scale.**_**_

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><p>...<p>

The air was bitterly cold all around, seeping with the aura of the Dorocha, a shrill wail swirling by the door—then floating away again. It's funny how a scream sounds when you know it is the call of the dead.

_So cold, _I thought. _I wonder if this is it. The last… the last of everything. _

And there was Arthur, being ordinary old Arthur. Brave and positive, huddled beside me, unable to breathe fully in the icy cold that surrounded his bloody chain mail. _Wait—why is there blood?_

My thoughts halted suddenly. I realized his arm was bleeding. He must nicked it when he pushed me away from the Dorocha… or maybe it was the door…

_He always goes and gets himself hurt, _I thought, pulling a bit of rag out of my jacket's inside pocket. I wrapped it around his upper arm and tied it off, relieved that there wasn't much blood, and what little rag that I had would completely do the trick. _Not life threatening, _I took a deep breath. _He is—we are—going to be just fine._

Arthur finally looked away from the door, his chest giving slight heaves.

"Alright?" I whispered, unable to fully flesh out the question. I glanced worriedly at his arm. Maybe it was worse than I thought.

"It's cold," he said shortly, shivering and not meeting my glance. He almost wore a guilty look.

"Right," I said, doubtfully. _Stating the obvious much?_

"You're not feeling it?" he hissed indignantly.

Despite the fact that I could not stop twitching with the shudders of cold, I just shook my head with an innocent 'no'.

"You know Merlin, you're a braver man than I give you credit for," Arthur said admittedly, craning his neck around to look towards the door again.

_He's always teased me about being a coward. If he suddenly has the urge to be honest and serious, he's got to be worried. _

I peered over his shoulder. "Really?" I asked cheekily, unable to smile completely. "Was that a compliment?"

"Don't be stupid," Arthur fought a smile, and I was unable to hold one back now.

I let out a short, quiet laugh, and silence fell. There was another loud scream—like a lonely ghost of a woman on a moor, a scream full of pain and terror—rushing by the door in a wind, growing louder and louder, and then fading away.

Arthur and I both stared at the door, almost calm. I knew that whatever was on the other side could come in at any moment. And then we would run.

My breath hitched. _But if Arthur is hurt, though… He might be too slow and weak. He wouldn't make it out of this room…_

Arthur turned back to the inside of the wall, pulling his focus inward, away from what flew in horror around the halls of the abandoned castle. He appeared to be having a revelation.

"Of all the things I've faced," he said slowly, "I've never worried about dying."

_He is worried. If he is worried, that means… very little hope for us. For me. That settles it, then. If—when—those things—he's a lot bigger than me, I'll have to shove him hard. I'll have to get past him, greet the thing head-on. He can't know what I'm going to do, if the case should present itself. Otherwise, he'll stop me._

_But he can't._

"I don't think you should now," I said firmly.

Arthur smiled, but he was confused. "Sometimes you puzzle me," he said.

"You never found me out," I grinned, my joke heavy with meaning that I could only ever laugh about.

"No," he agreed.

"I always thought," I said, realizing it could be my last chance to say anything at all. "That if things had been different we would have been good friends."

"Yeah," Arthur said, voice full of regret.

"That is if you hadn't been such a arrogant, pompous dollophead," I said, making Arthur laugh. _I always fall back on being humorous… when I could just… be myself… _"But we will defeat the Dorocha," I insisted, gathering what little positivity I had left. "We will, Arthur. Together." _Hear me now. Don't lose hope. Please._

"I appreciate that," Arthur said quietly.

I tried to reply, but found I didn't know what else to say.

"You're a brave man, Merlin," Arthur took a deep breath and gave me one of his very few serious looks. He actually meant it. I nodded, rather numbly.

"Between battles," he added with a laugh, and I snickered. _I totally had that coming. Here we are. Possibly about to die, and we're still bantering like this. _

"You don't know how many times I've saved your life," I replied, grinning broadly. _Oh, if you only knew…_

Arthur looked towards the sky and chuckled. "Ha. If I ever become King, I'm going to have you made court jester." We both let out our laughter, relaxing. It had been quiet for so long now…

**BAM!**

Something fell out in the hall. A gutterral, lengthy yell of a dead man roared somewhere close—very close—followed by the ear-shattering wail of a second Dorocha. _Nearly outnumbered already._

The door trembled.

"They say the darkest hour is just before the dawn," Arthur gasped, looking away from the door.

"It's pretty dark right now," I said quickly, nearly hyperventilating.

"Won't be long now," Arthur said, resolved.

_Not long._

A Dorocha scream rent the air, ghost light of the disembodied voice sliding between the planks of the door. The spirit, skeletal mouth wide and cloak of steam billowing out behind it, screeched with an impossible pitch as it flew into the room. I hardly had time to think—I jumped to my feet and shoved Arthur's shoulder away as he tried to meet it with his sword, as if battle would do any good.

He couldn't even rise to his feet before I had pushed off like a springboard, jumping as high as I could. Right into the Dorocha.

Not if I had fallen from the very highest tower of Camelot could I have imagined such a hard, stone pain. Doracha didn't feel like a mist or a smoke, or even a person. It was only rock. Hard rock that came with an ice so unbearable that it burned.

Skin lit on fire, I collided with the spirit, and it threw me back against the wall. All I felt was confusion- why was I was not suddenly waking up in another world, beckoned into gates of Avalon or a white land of magic after death?

I was still feeling pain. Intense, aggravating, deadly pain-

Which meant I could not be dead… yet.

_Alive_. _I can still think. I'm alive._ My skin crawled with a burning sensation—but still alive.

If only I could move my limbs. I must have been a block, a frozen block of nothing. As if my entire body had turned into a statue. My heart and lungs seized, pounding with tension, but unable to work properly.

Suddenly, I remembered Arthur. What happened to him? Did I save him?

_Did I save you? Please be okay. _

My ears were ringing, and somewhere under the inability to make my body respond to my brain's commands, I managed to _listen_. I heard the brush of fire on a torch, waving around. I heard someone call "What happened?" with no answer.

I felt—oh, thank all that is holy—I could feel _something. _Someone turning me around, but all I could see were hazy shapes under a sheen of light blue… like a frozen river surface.

I was carried out of the ruins, and as the movement rocked back and forth, I felt a dim kind of light all around me. Almost like sunlight, from the dawn that rose over the mountains and barely illuminated the smoky gray clouds. The feeling that you get, being in the summer after a long wet spring… that's what it felt like.

_Almost as if I'm melting away._

The stiffness was gone. I realized I could move a few, short minutes later. Barely, but enough to reposition my head into something more comfortable. It was still hard to breathe—but—one miracle at a time, in my opinion. I'm supposed to be dead anyhow.

"Cold," I said. I hadn't meant to speak at all until I could be sure of getting the words out, but there it was. Words of my own accord, and a word I hadn't even planned on saying. Of course it's cold. It's bloody cold. Everyone knows that.

"He just spoke," Lancelot shouted, with audible gasps of surprise, shock, and relief all around.

"What'd he say?" Arthur's voice. _He's okay…_

"He said 'cold'."

"We'll put him here, then, for a moment."

They put me against the stone wall of the fire pit, which was warmed in its own small way. Daylight filtered down, finally clearing my vision completely. I could see what was happening, but I had little control over what I could do. I felt like I weighed five-hundred pounds, my head a dropping weight threatening to snap off my neck. Lancelot put a blanket over me, and tried to hold my head up with little avail.

"We have to get him back to Gaius," Arthur said firmly.

_No, Arthur, you can't! If I'm not here, I can't save you… again. _

"And abandon the quest?" Sir Leon questioned gently. _Exactly! We can't abandon the quest! Listen to him, Arthur!_

"He saved my life, I won't let him die," Arthur said quickly. _Don't make decisions with your emotions, Arthur. That's my job._

"Sire, if we don't get to the Isle of the Blessed, hundreds more will perish," Sir Leon reminded him firmly.

"Let me take him!" Lancelot's voice.

_No, Lancelot! Don't you get it? I'm already dying. You can sacrifice a dying man in order for the Doracha to leave. Its so simple. And I can leave the land of the living, satisfied that no one else has died because of me. _

"Carrying a wounded man, alone… it would take you two, three days to reach Camelot," Arthur sighed.

_Whose side are you on, Arthur? Just admit it if you want to take me back to Camelot yourself. _

"Not if I go through the valley of the Fallen Kings," Lancelot added, a smile in his voice. "You cannot give up on the quest."

"Sire, he's right," Sir Leon agreed, and they all shifted.

Suddenly all eyes were upon me. Not that I could see them. But I could feel their gaze. A mixture of sympathetic, terrified, and critical.

_Probably wondering if I'm worth the effort. If I die in two, three minutes… _

I tried to look up at them, state my opinion, have my fair share of the debate. Only my eyebrows moved upwards, if only to acknowledge that I had heard.

"Okay," Arthur's voice was closer now, and calm. "Merlin? We're going to get you up now. We'll get you back to Camelot."

"Sire," Percival interjected. "Your arm. Let me take him."

Arthur reluctantly stepped aside, and Percival lifted me up as if I were made of straw. I could only hang limply and helplessly until he lowered me into the saddle of one of the horses, my entire torso draped over the neck of the horse because I was too weak to even hold myself up. Arthur stayed right by my head, and the other knights drifted off, giving him a moment with me.

"This is my fault," Arthur fussed with the straps on the saddle, annoyingly tying them around my legs as if I'd fall off or something. "And I'm sorry." _Don't be sorry! Just don't send me away, you prat. _I tried to say something, but only convulsed in a shudder with cold. Not what I had intended.

On the other side, Gwaine began to tie my other leg to the saddle. _What? Afraid I'll crawl back and take Arthur's place? Untie that… I don't need that… I can't be tied up, I'll have to get back somehow, and stop Arthur before he does something stupid._

I took a deep, shivering breath. "Take me with you… please," I whispered.

_I'm desperate, Arthur. You'll sacrifice yourself unless I go. I know you'd do it. _

Arthur's look was shocked for only a second, before he resumed tying the straps as if I hadn't just spoken a complete sentence through the fog. He hadn't expected me to speak out loud, but he hid his reaction well. "You'll die," he said quietly.

Each word felt like a struggle to let go. "You don't understand, please Arthur," I shook, completely unashamed of my begging. _He has to see reason. I can't leave with Lancelot. _

"Do you ever do as your told?" Arthur teased, but without a smile. He was relaying back to our old banter, but I didn't have time for it—this was far too serious. _His_ life was at stake—_willingly _at stake.

"I _have _to come with you," my voice strained to breaking point.

"Merlin," Arthur interrupted, sternly.

"We have to leave," Lancelot cut off whatever else Arthur might have argued, approaching from the left and throwing the saddle on his own horse. Arthur looked back at me with some regret, and undeniable worry in his eyes. Lancelot mounted his horse and, I'm guessing, gave Arthur a look of sympathetic impatience.

Arthur gave my shoulder a squeeze, and looked away. "Go," he said to the horse, giving it a light slap. Gwaine gave my arm an encouraging pat as the horse followed Lancelot's out of the castle courtyard.

_This can't be happening. As soon as I can gather a coherent thought, I'll tell Lancelot to turn around. That's what I'll do. I'll make Lancelot forget this whole idea of getting me back to Gaius. _My eyes stung with the brisk, morning air. A tear trailed down my face, freezing to the skin.

"Lancelot," I said hoarsely, but he did not hear me. "Take me back, please." My voice was too rough and far gone for anyone to hear me over the hoofbeats of two horses, especially in the gravel of the road leading away from the castle ruins. With the crunch of the rocks came the relaxing rhythm of the horse, and I felt my limbs growing looser and looser. It wouldn't be long now before I'd be able to wheel this horse around and gallop back from where we came.

But first... sleep stole into my mind, soothing the ache I felt from the inside out, dimming the fire and calming my unspoken panic.

_My place is with Arthur, especially when he feels like sacrificing himself for the kingdom, _I began to calculate my plans._ First, I'll tell Lancelot to untie me from this infernal saddle. Or better yet, I'll just gallop away. He'll chase me all the way back._

_And then I'm going to save that stupid, fat prince of Camelot._

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><p><em><strong>This is a one-shot I've been hoping to do for some time. Let me know if you'd like to see more "point of view" one-shots from Merlin.<strong>_

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